Amy Gutmann – Ivy Hoops Online

Alanna Shanahan brings history of compliance oversight including Esformes scandal back to Penn

June 9, 2021 by Rob Browne

Former Quaker lacrosse standout, Dr. Alanna Shanahan, will lead the Red & Blue Athletic Department on July 19 (Office of the Provost, Johns Hopkins University)

On a day when a disgraced men’s basketball coach was reported to be on the interview list for the Celtics head coaching job, the University of Pennsylvania hired his former supervisor as its new athletic director.

Just three months shy of the announcement that Grace Calhoun would be leaving Penn for Brown, her alma mater, Dr. Alanna Shanahan, a 1996 Penn graduate, was named Calhoun’s replacement on June 2. Shanahan, a one-time captain and MVP of the lacrosse team, began a nineteen year association with the department as an assistant and interim head coach for her former program.

Penn needs to go public with the results and reforms of its admissions investigation

October 24, 2019October 22, 2019 by Rob Browne

It has been 15 months since news broke about former men’s basketball head coach Jerome Allen receiving bribes from Florida businessman Philip Esformes to place Esformes’s son, Morris Esformes, onto the recruited athlete list for the entering Fall 2015 class. The information, which was revealed as federal authorities were investigating the elder Esformes for healthcare fraud, led to bribery charges against Allen. Since that time, Allen and Philip Esformes were found guilty and sentenced for their crimes, while the younger Esformes graduated from Penn’s Wharton School.

In March, Yale was caught up in the national Operation Varsity Blues admission scandal, when its former women’s soccer head coach Rudy Meredith was alleged to have taken bribes to place students on his recruited athlete list. Meredith plead guilty to his actions and is awaiting sentencing. Of the two recruited students, one was admitted for the fall of 2018 and had her acceptance rescinded.

Looking at the responses to these scandals by the two Ivy League institutions, one has been open and one has been far from forthcoming.

Lenses on Penn basketball’s expenses

March 3, 2015 by Mike Tony

There has been much talk in the past several years, particularly this season, about how much or little support Penn Athletics has received from the university.

It must be noted that the problem for Penn Athletics isn’t the inability to spend. According to data from the Office of Postsecondary Education, Penn’s annual expenses since 2004 – the start of Amy Gutmann’s presidency at Penn – average out to 30,644,364, the highest average in expenses in the Ivy League in that span:

Average Annual Athletics Expenses Since 2004

Penn 30,644,364
Yale 27,483,608
Princeton 19,230,050
Harvard 18,707,094
Columbia 18,703,370
Dartmouth 18,673,655
Cornell 18,589,023
Brown 15,175,837

It's all about the Benjamins for Penn Basketball

January 10, 2016March 2, 2015 by The Ancient Quaker

One of the most august positions in world economics is held by Penn’s founder, Benjamin Franklin. This is because besides being the consummate Penn Man —philosopher, humorist, inventor, publisher, Ambassador to France, politician, author, scientist and, of course, whoremaster — Big Ben’s portrait graces the front of the $100 bill. As the Ivy basketball season winds down with Pennsylvania”s once equally august hoops program firmly in the cellar, Penn President Amy Gutmann should reach into her $9.6 billion endowment, pull out a hundy, and take note.